next story

Obsessed TV Report Card: Broad City

The next great TV girlfriends have arrived, and they are down for whatever.

That's how I felt watching the premiere of Broad City, Comedy Central's new show, last night. Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer (the real-life versions) have created an Abbi and Ilana (the TV-screen versions) who feel exactly like that inseparable duo within your friend group—the batty one who'll try anything once, and her long-suffering cohort who keeps getting talked into things.

It's a classic dynamic (see: Laverne and Shirley, Ethel and Lucy, most buddy-cop flicks, with and without Chris Tucker), but it's one I've been missing on TV, along with the general presence of ride-till-we-die female friends in general. (I wrote about this in Glamour's January issue.)

Sure, Broad City has parallels to the other female-driven shows we're DVRing right now. They're roughly the same age as the New Girl gang, and they're in the same city as Girls and The Mindy Project. They've got the same feckless fun-at-all-costs mind-set as Rebel Wilson's clique on Super Fun Night. And in the pilot, Abbi puts a Post-It on a vibrator, which I'm gonna go ahead and call an unwitting shout-out to Being Mary Jane (those are like her two favorite things).

But this is a show with a vibe all its own, filling a gap nothing else on TV has so far—and not just because it's the only one with a serious BFFship at its center. Broad City is just so damn ballsy—they don't hold back any more than the guys on Workaholics do, and it feels curiously empowering to laugh at their racy, off-color stuff. There's no time to be soft on this show; these girls are hustlers. No e-book deal or hot-hostess job is coming to save them. When you show people scrubbing toilets at a faux-SoulCycle, returning stolen office supplies, and negotiating sketchy Craigslist deals, that's when you can call yourself a show about ladies struggling in the city.

Last night's episode went to crazy heights and closed out with the girls already reminiscing on their diapered Fred Armisen adventure. It was a moment that let us in on what this show is all about: the kind of crazy experiences you and your friend almost pee at brunch remembering years later. That scrappy-scrapbook sensation is one big thing Broad City has over shows in which the girls don't live their days side by side in the first place. And I, for one, am so excited to go on Abbi and Ilana's adventures, to be there for the wacko stories that make the best memories.